Tuesday 21 February 2012

Shark's fin soup - Cruel or Class?

Link to blogpost/article: http://themarketingpeg.blogspot.com/2008/06/do-you-like-sharks-fin-soup.html

Personally, I feel that the shark's fin soup debate is rather useless. Activist keep reinstating the same point over and over again: we only use the fins and throw the rest of the shark back into the sea, letting it die a painful death.

"However, these sensational pictures obscure the fact that many within the industry are against such practices. The vast majority of fins in the market are taken from sharks after their death. This is the preliminary finding of a review made with the assistance of shark experts, fishermen, captains of big fishing ships and representatives of fishery departments, the fishing industry, fish markets and fishing ports." -quoted from a passage of an article on the Straits Times.

In my opinion, shark's fin soup is delicious and it is considered a delicacy during Chinese New Year and weddings. Although this may sound stupid, but if shark's fin is not offered during these festive periods, the family may appear 'cheapskate'.

However, if one still forbids oneself from enjoying this amazing delicacy, there are alternatives such as bird's nest soup that has much more nutrients and still portrays the same prestige and value.

Chio Jia Le (12)
S3-02

3 comments:

  1. They article states that instead of eating shark's fin soup, there is another delicacy, which is the bird's nest soup. Since there are such things as vegetarian meat, why not have shark's fin soup replaced with a replica to substitute the original shark's fin soup? Though it might not taste exactly the same, at least the taste and feel is similar. Best of all, it does not affect the population of sharks. Though sharks maybe dangerous to us humans, that does not give us the rights to harm their families and deplete their population.

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  2. I agree with Zhi Yong. Having the privilege to have something similar tasting to sharks' fin soup and yet does not lead sharks to extinction is already very lucky of us. We would not disrupt the food chains and yet have something very similar to the real taste of sharks' fin. We do not need to have the original sharks' fin soup just to feel classy. Plus, even though sharks are dangerous to the human race, it does not mean that we should be cruel to them. It is cruel and selfish for humans to catch a shark just for its fin and just throw it back into the ocean for it to die.

    Khim Tan (08)

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  3. This delicacy is something of class and it is what most people would love to enjoy, but little would one know, we may be unknowingly bringing a wildlife closer to extinction. Furthermore, it is cruel to harvest on these endangered species, which are turning rare. This is also due to the over-harvesting of these sharks by humans, which may turns out to become a butterfly effect. Ever wondered if the shark's population is depleted? Truthfully speaking, sharks are the natural oceanic predator, and if we start putting dramatic decrease in their numbers, we are going to disrupt the whole ecosystem and cause a huge change to the environment. Who knows? We may even cause harm to ourselves by hunting more of these sharks and enjoying this rare delicacy. Thus, we should enjoy substitutions of such rare delicacy like Bird Nest's soup or other forms of nutritious soup, which would not harm the environment or cause a drop in the population of any wildlife.

    Looi Wei Chern (18)

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